Reed Mueller

Yesterday in our worship gathering we continued our discussion of truth of the Trinity. In so doing we moved from the fact that has revealed himself as One Being, Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to a study of what this means about who he is in essence. To try to learn something of God’s essence is to sneak a peek into the interior life of the Trinity rather than to observe his work in the world as Trinity. Theologians describe the pursuit of the former as the study of the Ontological (or Immanent) Trinity while the pursuit of the latter is the study of the Economic Trinity. Saying this doesn’t imply there are two Gods; rather, it is just a way for us to develop categories of thought that help us grow in our understanding of Him.

So with that said, what did we learn yesterday at our gathering? In three short words, we learned that God is love (1 John 4:8). If you want to know who God is in his essence – who He has always been even before the creation of time and the world and you and me – you must understand that God is love. How else could love have existed prior to the creation of anything unless the persons of the Trinity were loving one another at that time. Love, as we discussed yesterday, requires another to love to be true. The Trinity, this One Being, Three Persons has always been in a kind of Dance of Love (perichoresis) from eternity past to eternity future. In this dance, there has always been an open, authentic, and serving love beyond the limits of our imagination and before anything that is a thing existed.

Why does this understanding of the Ontological Trinity matter?

• First, theologians argue that apart from the existence of perfect eternal love, there can be no explanation for love in the world. 1 John 4:7 implies as much in suggesting that the origin of human love is not to be found in any of us, but rather, emanates from God. Thus, if we want to gain ground on our desire to love truly, we must return to the origin of love, the God who revealed himself in the reciprocity of his persons. We cannot and do not produce any love apart from him; where there have been moments of love in our lives, they are built upon the foundation of his love and resulting from it.
• Second, it matters because it gives us that sneak peek we wanted into the essence of God himself. To say that God is love is profound. Love isn’t god, as I mentioned in the sermon; God is love. If we know this about God we know what we need to know to discover freedom from fear, for love isn’t something he does, as if he could stop loving somehow or because of some thing done or not done. Because God is love it is not in his nature to be unloving. Bank on that and the fear of abandonment (1 John 4:9,16) and judgment (1 John 4:10,17-18) will slowly melt away from your life as you grasp the full significance of that truth. To know that God is love is to know the core of his being, inasmuch as we can grasp it (and we will spend eternity coming to discover how deep and wide his love is /Ephesians 3:14-19).

God is love. This is the truth revealed to us not only about what we most desire to give and receive (i.e., love) but also about who God is ontologically, in himself, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a dance of love. I can express this important truth no better than Robert Letham, a theologian who suggests the following:

God is a triune communion of persons. Love is intrinsic to who he is. Attributes like grace, mercy, justice, and even holiness are all relative to his creatures… Love, however, belongs to who he is in himself in the undivided communion of the three persons… The reciprocal love of the three persons exists in the unbreakable union of the undivided Trinity. In that we are enabled to be “partakers of the divine nature,” (2 Peter 1:4) “changed from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) by the Spirit of the Lord, we are brought into this communion of the love of God. (emphasis mine)